


The Subtle Knot Which Makes Us Man

by dancinbutterfly



Series: The Ecstasy [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 17 year old Geno, ABO World Building, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Banter, Consensual Sex, Consensual Underage Sex, Dirty Talk, Gender Issues, He's sure, Hockey Talk, Kink Negotiation, Kissing, Knotting, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Older Man/Younger Man, Pet Names, Public Sex, Self-Lubrication, Semi-negotiated Humiliation Kink(Geno likes it), Seriously Geno is asked if he's sure a few times, Verbal Humiliation, getting caught
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 11:58:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3208340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being an omega in the KHL is beyond illegal. So it's not a good thing when Zhenya goes into an accidental heat on an away game and loses his virginity to a hot older alpha he meets in the hotel bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Subtle Knot Which Makes Us Man

**Author's Note:**

> I had to write this. Had to as in I had no choice - there were nights I couldn't sleep because I had to work on this. I'm serious.
> 
> Anyway I know this has an OMC but I hope you'll give it a try anyway. 
> 
> Warning: Malkin is in his first year of the KHL when this fic takes place so he's 17 which is above the age of consent in Russia which is why I didn't warn for underage.
> 
> Thanks to anyone and everyone who supported me with this. I dont know what I'd do without you.
> 
> The title is from The Ecstasy by John Donne

Being an omega male means that controlled heats are a part of Zhenya's life. It's just a fact, like long hockey practices, weekly visits to his maternal grandfathers’ house, and doing chores and homework. He likes them even, the pleasure-pain-want-need of heat, the desire to roll over and lie down and just open up. Alpha men and women throw around terms for those feelings that are supposed to be degrading but that make his skin prickle with want when he thinks too long about them. Ripe. Prime. Juicy. 

All the same, he knows he's lucky. When his mother’s omega-father was a young man the option of suppressants didn't even exist. Once he had his first heat, he had to have an alpha or beta chaperone at all times for protection until he met and mate-bonded her alpha-father since omega males without suppressants are obvious to anyone with a nose. Under the Soviet regime a mate-bond was all that was required for a legally binding union which was all that was needed for him to be free to leave the home on his own. Then, of course, there had been the matter of her omega-father's family being religious. They weren't now but Zhenya grew up with pictures of the wedding in their small apartment so he knew the two did eventually get married by an Orthodox priest when they found one who had escaped the purges.  Even after their marriage, Zhenya's omega-grandfather was still bound by his own body’s demands every month. He had been physically unable to work outside the home like alphas and betas did even if his family had been more liberal.

Zhenya is unchained and his omega-grandfather always reminds him to be grateful of that, the balance he can have as a man and an omega both. He takes his pills to maintain a cycle and can live a real life. He goes to school and plays hockey and grows up without anyone knowing what he is because open doors aren't exactly a Russian tradition and the KHL's attitude towards omegas is not open either. 

Neither is passport control. The UN calls the restriction on omega travel freedoms oppressive and omegaist. Zhenya simply thinks it’s unfair.

He can’t do anything about it so he just lives his life. He has one heat during Christmas holidays, one over Easter (Denis jokes once about how at least Zhenya doesn't have to go to their cousins' and his father always smacks the back of his head for it), and a third during the hockey off season, when they can “visit relatives” in the west. He doesn’t complain even if he’s horrified by the fact that they know what he’s doing in his room alone for the two to three days his heats last. They are overwhelming and as much as he hates the fact that everyone knows exactly what he is doing locked alone in his room, he loves the feeling of his heat - being lost in his own body like a truly great game only better, deeper, more. It makes him hate having to hide who he is more every time he comes blinking and dazed back to reality.

So the spare time in the summers after his heat are usually when his mother takes him out of town to see omega specialists. The trips are to different doctors every year, under different names to make sure that things are as the should be: his body is fertile, hormonally balanced, and the suppressants aren't stunting any growth. 

The schedule means that the rest of the time he can live as a beta, play hockey, go to regular classes without worrying about hungry alpha eyes and hungrier alpha noses. It means the family can pretend that their small world hasn’t bent itself around his gender and his hopes 85% of the time. It means that Zhenya can dream of the day he can have hockey and himself and see an actual light at the end of his long and difficult tunnel.

It makes sense, then, that the schedule would be put on hold when he gets to the KHL. He clings to the fact that he only has to make it one year. He can survive one year. That’s his mantra - one year with the KHL and then he gets to go to the NHL. All he has to do is wait and work hard then he’ll be a Penguin playing under Mario Lemieux, the first omega captain to bring home a Stanley Cup. 

He’ll be safe in America. He’ll be free, or freer at least. He’ll still need suppressants - every omega who holds down a job uses suppressants in the modern world. The mark of civilization in this day and age is the presence of free government-subsidized access to suppressants for all omega citizens if needed or wanted. Of course suppressants will still be a part of his life until his body stops producing eggs and his heats end forever (which wasn't until nearly sixty for his omega-grandfather) but he won’t have to hide who he is anymore. He won’t have to take ones so strong that coming off them makes him sick and sends him into heats that are dizzying in their intensity in order to hide his natural omega scent completely. 

He’ll be able to be himself for the first time in his life. He’s always been goal oriented and when there’s a prize so huge in front of him, it only makes him work harder.

That works for the first few months. He plays like a demon and he keeps his head down off the ice. He never really relaxes all the way but it’s okay. Mostly. It’s okay until he misses four days of suppressants when they play back to back games against St. Petersburg and Prague then drive back to Magnitogorsk. 

He’s never missed four doses in a row before but St. Petersburg goes into double overtime before they manage to break a 1-1 tie with a winning shot and they lose to Prague in triple overtime and he faceplants into the hotel bed the moment he gets out of the shower both nights without even putting on clothes. Then his medications are all in his suitcase, not his carry on and by the time he gets back to Magnitogorsk, he’s already missed them. 

Frantic Googling tells him that typically, a missed dose doesn’t do anything. It happens, although in very rare cases it can cause a heat to occur or, much more likely, make a person far more susceptible to pregnancy even without heat. That doesn’t bother Zhenya. He’s resolutely celibate, intends to stay that way until he gets to America, and notes that the statistics are 1.705% and .016%  likelihoods of side-effects respectively. He’ll be fine.

As luck would have it, he is, in fact, not fine. They’re playing in Moscow and get in two days early for press and practice so of course with his luck, the day before the game his heat hits him in the hotel bar harder and faster than ever in his life. One moment he's sitting at the bar, staring into a half-empty glass, absently wondering if he'll be able to get well and truly hammered when he gets on lighter meds in America. The next, hormones surge through his body and crash into his brain like a veritable tsunami. Sensation and need crest and crash through his body so intensely that they actually knock his legs out from under him so he has to lean on the bar for support. 

A hand lands on his shoulder, helping to hold him up. He mumbles a thank you then he shudders on his inhale. The hand on his shirt should be on his skin because that hand is long, firm, and definitely belongs to an alpha male, an unbonded one by the scent of him. Everything would be better with skin contact. Though maybe not. Everything is already overwhelming and oh God, he needs. He makes a small noise in the back of his throat that is deeply undignified and the alpha's hand moves from his shoulder to the exposed skin of his forearm. The simple touch of skin on skin is already enough to have him on the edge orgasm as it is. 

“Oh, man, you poor thing. It hit you hard just now didn’t it? Breathe. Just breathe,” the alpha murmurs, his mouth near his ear. Zhenya lets out all the air he didn't realize he was holding in one long burst. "That's it. You're all right. I've got you."

He turns to look at him and finds a wiry, handsome man. His hair is jet black except for all of the streaks where he's greying too early for a man who couldn't be older than forty-five. No. On second glance he couldn't be more than forty, maybe younger.

His dark brows and the shadow of his beard are a stark contrast to pale blue eyes that compliment a face that is all sharp lines and hard planes. Zhenya wants to nuzzle against it until he's purring with his arousal at all the hardness of the alpha's features with the exception of his mouth. The alpha's mouth looks so soft Zhenya wants to fall in, feel his tongue or fingers or cock wrapped up in those soft, wide lips. He strokes his thumb over the hairless skin of Zhenya’s inner arm with the pads of his fingertips. The gentle touch is enough to have him leaking and ready to beg. The feeling is too good and not enough. 

“I’ll wave over that beta waitress and she can walk you somewhere safe." The waitress in question is maybe ten feet away. She is about twenty-five, bottle blond and beautiful in kitten heels that are small enough to be both orthopedic and dressy at the same time with stockinged legs for days and generous breasts but it's all for the show and the tips it earns. She isn't what he wants, what he needs. A small noise of protest escapes his throat even though his lips are shut. 

"Hey, easy. Easy, little omega, easy. You're okay." A narrow chest presses against his shoulder holding him up. "You just smell so hungry and I know what you want. It's okay to want me to knot you through this instead. Or I won't. You know there's no pressure. Just relax and think. You can do this. Think.” His thumb is stroking a hypnotic rhythm along his veins, like he's a wild horse to be gentled. "Now just tell me what you need. I'll make sure you get it. No matter what. I can even call your parents if you like."

“No. Don't go. Don't call anyone. Stay." 

He clutches at the alpha's forearms and electricity sparks up his arms. It's so good. The sensation is every denial he's ever forced himself made pleasure. He's never had a chance like this before and he's not going to let it leave him, not when an alpha like this, handsome and encouraging his coherence not blind obedience, is offering. 

"Knot me,” Zhenya exhales because there's only one answer. He needs it. He does. He always needs it, every heat, every damn one and sometimes when he's not in heat too. He’s just never been touched by an alpha when he was craving like this. It is too good to say no, even though he could. He could say no but why should he? 

He’s damned no matter what he does. His roommate is an alpha just like two thirds of the team. Even if he could keep his hands off himself, they would all know what he was just by the _come-fuck-me scent_ his body is putting off. Even half delirious from the chemical rush of heat exaggerated by an alpha's touch and smell, Zhenya can see a few alpha men and women in the bar. All of them are glancing his way as they breathe in his scent. They raise their eyebrows or lick their lips or look away but they all react and Zhenya knows it's beyond obvious to all of them what he is: omega in heat.

So fuck it. Why not enjoy himself if he's heading for a fall anyway? If he’s going to do a thing, he’s not going to do it halfway. That is not the man he is, or is trying to be. He's old enough to consent and does so with relish, covering the alpha’s hand with his own. The alpha laces their fingers together as Zhenya involuntarily casts his eyes around the room. His teammates are all elsewhere, thank Christ, but they cannot stay here. Not like this.  

“We need to go to your room. We can’t go to mine. We can’t. And protection. We need to get some. I'm not-”

“That's fine. I have a couple condoms in my room and I’ll call out for more once we take the edge off for you. We won’t run out. Come and let me take care of you now.”

He sags against the alpha because it’s so much easier this way, giving into the pulsing, aching want of his body than to fight it. He’s tired of fighting all the time. Just this once he gives in and takes something he wants besides the ice and the puck. 

He manages to make it all the way into the elevator before he winds his arms around the alpha’s neck and kisses him, something he's done maybe half a dozen times before. He's always been too scared he'll slip up and reveal his secondary gender to do more than snag a few drunk kisses at parties. After one dangerous encounter with an older alpha girl who nearly took him to his knees before he made his excuses and left, Zhenya stuck with betas who weren't paying attention or omegas who he knew he would never want to have sex with.

Kissing this alpha is nothing like those fumbling explorations. The alpha hums and holds him by the hips, pulling him tight against him. His mouth is commanding, taking Zhenya's first move as an invitation to invade, fucking his mouth with agile tongue and biting with teeth that are a little sharper than Zhenya's own, alpha teeth designed for killing and eating meat, for snarling displays of dominance, for biting through the barrier of thick human skin to claim a mate at the bonding gland. Zhenya whimpers under the onslaught clinging as best he can as his knees go watery. 

The sound elicits a groan from the alpha. He slides a hand up under Zhenya's shirt then down his back to the waist of his pants, briefly sliding down to cup an asscheek and squeeze. There's a brief moment when Zhenya can't inhale from panic. He's never been touched by anyone but the omega specialists and never during heat. The very idea is terrifying right up until the alpha's hand gets under the waistband of his slacks, boxers, and down between his cheeks to slide in the slick that feels like it’s streaming out like a river. Then want, want, want, need replaces his fear.

“So wet for me,” the alpha groans into his mouth, pushing his hand down farther so his fingers can press against Zhenya’s opening. For a moment he tightens in reflex but after a half second of those fingers resting against his wet skin, he opens for the alpha almost against his will. Two slip inside easy and he whimpers, clutching at the alpha so that he won’t fall, hit the floor for the sharp pleasure at being filled. The alpha chuckles. “Good. You are such a good boy for me aren’t you?" 

Zhenya groans in agreement and presses closer. His cock is so, so hard. The dexterous fingers inside him take away the horrible emptiness. He whimpers for more and god, the alpha gives it to him in spades. 

"Your hole's already open wide and dripping like it should be." He kisses Zhenya's temple and he melts against the alpha. "Such a good slut for me. You’ll be so pretty when I get to see you, won’t you? Pretty and hungry and greedy.” He twists his fingers as the elevator rises and the fact that they are not enough proves the alpha’s point. The hand not working inside Zhenya pushes his bangs off his sweaty forehead. “I bet you have the most gorgeous, starving ass. You don’t have to worry though. I’ll fill you up; I promise.” 

“Please,” he whimpers, not caring that the alpha has reduced him to the basest of terms - not even his gender but just his body as a vessel to be used. It’s degrading and filthy yet it stokes his inner fire to a raging blaze, sends his nails digging into the fabric of the alpha’s clothing as he searches for more, more, more.

He’s lost now. He knows he is but he doesn’t care. If he’s going to give himself over to this, he's happy to give completely. “Please I-I- More.”

The elevator dings on the floor that must be the alpha’s and he pulls his fingers out and Zhenya whines at the loss. “Don't. Don’t stop. I need it.”

“Shh, I know. I won't,” he says, licking shimmering fluid off his fingers and pushing Zhenya out with a hand on his chest.  He has two inches and maybe fifty pounds of muscle on the slim alpha but the man moves him like Zhenya is no larger than a doll and no stronger than a child. He guides him out and down the hall and Zhenya lets himself be directed, sinking into the easy submission of heat that omegas are famous for. 

The mindlessness of it is sublime until his eyes light on Coach Sykora and one of the assistant coaches, leaned against a door that must be their hotel room, talking. Both men are alphas so their heads snap up at what must be the overpowering smell of his heat but there’s nothing desirous in their eyes when their gazes zone in on him, halting his progress.

The alpha molds himself to Zhenya’s back, his hard cock fitting so perfectly against his ass that for a moment, the want to have that inside him overpowers even his fear. He grinds back for a heartbeat before his rational mind floods back, paralyzing him. 

“Why did you stop walking?” The alpha wraps his right arm around Zhenya’s middle, his hand pressing low on his pelvis where his womb hides beneath muscle and skin, close enough to his cock to make his nerves sing but too far to satisfy. However, his still-sticky fingers manage to undo the top two buttons of Zhenya’s pants without his hand straying very far. It makes them loose enough that his left hand can gain easier access to his ass. 

“I know how much you need me to fuck you,” the alpha growls low in his ear as he sinks his fingers inside him again, three this time, right in front of his coaches. It’s a dominance display, a claiming act that is barely legal and only acceptable in heats this severe. If his body were any less needy, it’d be well within the other men’s rights to call the police on them for lewd behavior. 

The lack of control over the whole situation humiliates Zhenya down to his bones. Worse, he’s ashamed by how much he likes the way it feels to claimed like this, to be found worthy of being put on display by the alpha behind him. It makes him gush around the alpha’s fingers and his cock throb harder against his half-closed fly. 

It earns him a smattering of soft kisses beneath his ear, soft and warm and achingly affectionate in contrast to the archaic exhibition. “There. See how well you swallow my fingers down, my good little fuckhole?  I can smell how drenched you are as much as I can feel it.” He pushes his fingers in deep and twists viciously. His knuckles scrape across Zhenya’s prostate and he lets out an involuntary cry. The alpha nips his neck, gentle despite his sharper alpha teeth, then kisses the skin in the same spot. “Don’t you want to be full of my cock instead, locked on tight around my knot?”

Helplessly, hopelessly, Zhenya nods. His eyes are still locked on his coaches but he doesn’t think he can let himself stop now. Not when he’s so close to what he needs. 

“Say it.”

Tears sting his eyes. He could say stop and he knows this alpha would stop. The way he handles him, even when his hands are firm, is careful.  The kindness in his voice has never stopped, not even when the words themselves grew perverse. This alpha will not continue without his consent. Knowing this is part of what makes Zhenya want him so badly; he’s never really heard of alphas doing that for omegas. Then again, he’s always made it a point to ignore the alphas' locker room talk. 

Yet even if this alpha weren’t the type who would respect his consent, he could say "No," loud enough for his coaches to hear. They would hear him and pull the alpha off of him. The truth is Zhenya doesn’t want to stop. He doesn’t want him to take his fingers out or stop calling him names or telling Zhenya what he’s going to do to him, what he’s going to make him do. He blinks back the tears because he’s telling the truth when he chokes out, “I want it.”

The alpha’s fingers go still inside him. Only the cold stares of his coaches down the hall stop him from grinding backwards hard to force more. 

“Now ask me for what you want. I won’t force you.”

“Fuck me. Please.” Then in a whisper, he chokes out, “I'm good for you, alpha.” It’s the only way Zhenya can bear to obey and ask the alpha for what he truly wants - for this man to say more of the ugly things that make his skin sing as he takes Zhenya sweetly to pieces.

The alpha seems to understand because he murmurs “Yes, you are. You're so good, such a good, sweet omega for me." He rewards Zhenya with another sharp nip on his neck followed by a return of the steady in-out rhythm of the alpha’s fingers. Zhenya almost does cry then with relief. “If you're ready open your wet hole for me like the good boy you are,” the alpha says, giving him another twist of his wrist that makes Zhenya cry out despite himself, “Keep walking. My room is at the end of the hall.” 

Oh God. Zhenya's legs won’t move. They are frozen but not from blinding yesmoretheresorightsogoodmore pleasure from the fingers fucking into him. That sort of pleasure paralysis he's learning he can move through so long as the alpha is with him and he has firm direction to hit all the submissive omega buttons in his brain.

No, the coaches are still there, their gazes trapping him in a moment of mortification that drags into eternity. They see him falling apart, melting at the praise and the degradation coupled into one. 

“I can’t.” Zhenya whispers.

Is that his voice? He sounds so small and ready to cry. He didn't know he was on the verge of tears before.

“Yes. You can,” the alpha says, steel in every word. He speaks calmly, like he’s at a board meeting or perhaps giving a lecture to a large group of students, not fingering Zhenya in the hallway of a hotel with two other alphas watching. He softens the steel by punctuating each word with a warm soft kiss to his cheekbone until he reaches the corner of Zhenya's mouth. 

Biting into Zhenya's earlobe with alpha-sharp canines so hard it hurts for a moment, the alpha brings him back to the here and now before he continues. “I know that you’re very young. This is probably one of your first heats with a real alpha. That's why it’s okay that you don't understand but you said you’re good. You want to be good for me then you should know that a good omega in heat spends two to three days as their alpha's fuckpuppet. They do what their alpha tells them and love it. Now,” he says and it's a snarl, guttural from his chest and the back of his throat, “Go.” 

Normally, that sort of tone would make him prickle, protest in pure obstinacy at being treated like that. Now though, he finds himself moving forward as if the alpha is moving his body for him. The alpha thrusts his fingers forward so hard it pushes a small “uh” sound out of his lungs with every step as if to prove his point, that Zhenya’s body powerless to the will of his alpha's hand inside him on, moving him like that puppet he described.

His coaches watch him pass and then start follow until they reach the door to the alpha’s room. The alpha stops him at the door, the hand on his stomach pressing inwards in direct opposition to the digits working inside him. Zhenya’s forehead hits the door with a thunk as the coaches crowd them. The alpha doesn’t move away from him, doesn’t remove his hands or stop their motion. In fact his right hand actually drops to cup Zhenya’s cock and he has to bite his lip to keep from making another undignified noise. 

He begins to lightly rub his palm over Zhenya’s cock in a steady counter-rhythm to his other hand as he looks over Zhenya’s shoulder at the coaches.“Can we help you?”

“Evgeni is ours,” his head coach says. Sykora's never called Zhenya by his Christian name to his face before. In press meetings, during the draft or awards but not like this. Sykora says “Evgeni” now the same way you would say “the dog” or “the book, ” speaking of him like Zhenya is nothing more than an object that can be owned. Worse, he clearly isn’t even considered a thing that these men he’s always admired are proud to have. The disdain is clear on both his coaches’ faces.. “What do you think you’re doing with him?”

When he can think clearly again, Zhenya will have to face the fact that his relationship with these men has been destroyed by his biology. For now, he's taking shelter in alpha, alpha, alpha, warmth, strength, protection, affection and satisfaction that helps his brain actually work. 

The alpha kisses a line down his neck from ear to collar as if to prove his thoughts correct then says, “I’m helping him out.”  Zhenya shivers all the way down to his toes even as he burns with shame and fear. “I can’t bear to see an omega in need.”

“Not without signing a nondisclosure agreement you’re not,” Sykora growls. His coach, unlike the alpha currently melting Zhenya’s knees and making his ass wetter by the second, is broad as a brick wall and twice as solid, the kind of alpha who fill military ranks and boxing rings.

The slender alpha male holding Zhenya in his arms doesn't seem impressed. The only acknowledgement he gives Sykora is to lift his hand from where it was palming Zhenya's cock to give a dismissive wave in the man's direction. “I have no idea what could possibly be that important but how about you bring us food, no fast food - takeaway from somewhere nice, an economy sized box of alpha condoms and when you complete your mission I'll look at whatever documents you want me to sign. Okay? Okay.” He flicks his wrist at Zhenya’s coach in a way no one else would dare. “Now leave. We don’t have time for this conversation, gentlemen. He really should’ve been fucked full at least an hour ago.” 

With that, he pushes Zhenya in the empty room. Zhenya stumbles in a few feet, watching the alpha kick the shut then throw the deadbolt. The alpha turns, leans against the door and smirks. “So, Zhenya, it’s a pleasure to officially meet you. I’m Dmitriy Ryzhikov. Dima.”

Okay, that was actually reassuring. Now that Zhenya could see this man as Dima, just a regular person like he is, he can relax. Well. A little bit. He’s still a virgin in the throes of heat about to be fucked for the first time after all. “Um, hello.”

“Hello. Now that we’ve been formally introduced, will you be a good little whore and turn to face away from me then strip slowly? I want to see where your slick has soaked through your clothes.” 

Zhenya nods and turns. Giving in feels good. He doesn’t have to think about how his coaches looked at him, how this is going to ruin his life. He can turn and face the window and pull his shirt and sweater off over his head without thought beyond completing his task. He kicks off his shoes and socks, then slides off his pants. Zhenya stops when he gets down to his boxers to let Dima look. The pale blue fabric is sticking to the backs of his thighs and his ass. He throbs with emptiness when he could have Dima inside him now, right now. His ass clenches with the need to be filled and he can feel a stream of his natural lubricant drip down the inside of his legs in response.

“Jesus,” Dima breathes. “Face me.” Zhenya obeys and finds Dima an inch away from him. “Christ, I don’t think I’ve met a omega who was such a desperate slut for it before, not even during heat. You’re just so ready to be used. How did you go from zero to gushing so fast, Zhenya? I don't know but, fuck, this will be so good for you.”

It has to be hormones that lets Dima pick him up and throw him on the bed because Zhenya is not a small man. Zhenya kicks out of his underwear as Dima grabs a condom. The whole process takes about twenty seconds before Zhenya’s blessed with the relief of having an alpha’s cock in his ass, cooling the burn of his heat even as his body tenses with pleasure. 

Dima scoops up his knees and rests them in the crook of his elbows, making it easier for him to snap his hips hard against Zhenya’s skin. He can’t hold back the breath that is slammed out every time Dima bottoms out inside him and what few words he can manage are curses and appeals to God for harder and deeper and more, please, more.

“I wish I could make you sloppy with me,” Dima pants as he pistons inside Zhenya. “A needy bitch like you, I’d stuff your ass with my come, mix it with your lube and watch it spill out of you because you’re so full you can’t hold it all, because I left you open so wide.”

He punctuates this with a hard thrust that shoves the beginning of his knot against Zhenya. It doesn’t go in at first but when it does he can’t hold back his sob.

“I’d make you keep it though. I’d push it back in with my fingers then knot you again so can taste it in the back of your throat until your next heat. You’d beg me to do it again and again because that’s what you’re meant to be, a perfect open comehole that needs to be full. Fuck, Zhenya, I won’t let you go empty again.”

He rocks his hips with the knot firmly inside Zhenya a few times and he’s sure that’s it. This is knotting, what everyone talks about. Instead Dima pulls out, stretching his rim tight, too much and then rocking back in against him and he becomes certain this can’t work. It can’t then it does. Over and over because Dima’s knot is still growing until it locks into place. That is when Zhenya finally comes, his ass clenching tightly, every contraction slamming his prostate into the unyielding hardness of the knot. He doesn't hear himself scream. White noise fills his ears when his orgasm rips through him. He only knows he did because when he comes back to himself, with Dima's body draped across his back, knot still locked securely in place, his throat hurts.

“You were such a good little fuckhole for me,” Dima murmurs when he notices that Zhenya’s eyes are open. He goes up on his elbows and strokes his thumbs down Zhenya’s neck. “Did you like it?”

“I- yes.”

“And the names. You liked those too, didn’t you?”

He can’t look Dima in the eyes so he turns his head away to nod. Dima catches his chin and pulls him towards him until they are face to face. He dips down and kisses Zhenya then says “It’s all right to like it. People say crazy things during sex but especially during heat.”

“Oh.”

“Mm. You may not like it the rest of the time. Or you might. You never know until you try. I don’t usually do that but it slipped out then you were so…pliant I just kept going. It made you so wet so fast.” He nuzzles under Zhenya's ear, inhaling deeply. "I could barely breathe for how fuckable you smelled when I said those things."

He swallows with an audible click before he can speak. When he does, it feels...insufficient. “It was good.”

“Do want me to keep doing it?”

He nods because he can't quite bring himself to say yes out loud. It is enough that he could say yes at all.

“Okay then," Dima says all cheer and good humor. " How about when I can pull out, we’ll put you on your knees so I can fuck you like a proper bitch, yes?”

“Yes,” Zhenya breathes and Dima laughs then kisses him again. 

~*~*~

Hiding his face with a pillow when the knock comes may be cowardly but Zhenya decides he doesn't care. He doesn’t want to face Sykora again when he’s like this. Dima seems more than happy to roll out of bed to handle it. Dima doesn’t tell his coach fuck off in so many words but when they’re done trading nondisclosure agreements for two plastic bags that are filled with supplies, but basically, yeah, Dima says that his coach to fuck off. 

“I don’t even want to smell you until after his heat breaks,” Dima growls at Sykora The sound is so vicious, Zhenya lifts the corner of the pillow so he can see them, To his shock, Zhenya watches as Dima snaps his jaws at Sykora before slamming the door in his face. Even from across the room Zhenya can hear his teeth click together in one of the oldest dominance acts in human communication.

It's also hot as fuck. Zhenya's barely even fantasized about having an alpha fight for him. That's not the kind of thing he ever gave himself permission to accept as a possibility. He was living as a beta, had to in order to play. Betas did not have alphas snapping jaws or growling at each other over them. They didn't want it. So he couldn't let himself even consider it outside of those three heats a year when he was able to embrace the omega man he cannot risk being the rest of the year.

Now, though, Dima has stood his ground for the right to breed with him and Zhenya's body is burning in response to the presence of a worthy display. By the time Dima gets back to the bed Zhenya is dripping wet again, two fingers buried inside his ass and twisting as he pistons them in and out desperately. He is on display in offer like never imagined he could be and it feels like freedom. It feels like hope, like what his life will be like when he gets to America and doesn't have to hide anymore. 

He imagines having a mate one day. In the NHL he could be with an alpha without it costing him his dreams, his freedom to move from place to place without needing an alpha or beta relative or government signatory's permission. Yes, there are biases against omegas still but in America he wouldn't have to hide his desire for a partner to hold him down and fuck him open and look at him like they own him for a lifetime of heats. He moans at the prospect to have that right as much as at the feel of his fingers working inside himself. 

He can feel his juices dripping down his hand and over his wrist and he whines, nonverbal, with his legs spread and his arm bent awkwardly. Dima stands at the end of the bed, watching him fuck himself and tells him in a voice low and rumbling to add another finger that makes Zhenya beg for his cock. Dima makes him wait until he's worked in the fourth, until he is crying into the pillow and sobbing for his knot before he even deigns to join Zhenya on the mattress. Dima takes him on his front that time, one knee tucked up under his chest as he grinds into him and pulls his hair, whispering that he's filthy and greedy and an impatient little slut, that he deserves to be fucked like this, filled up and used like the omega bitch he was born to be. Zhenya moans and begs for more. He comes twice on Dima's knot and falls asleep without feeling Dima pull out.

When coherency returns, Zhenya finds Dima flipping through the paperwork with a frown on his face. “This is ridiculous. They want me to sign that I've never even met you and for what? It’s just a heat. What do you do, sweet boy, that makes this such a big secret, hm? You’re over sixteen aren’t you? You look like you are.”

“Eighteen in July,” Zhenya groans, holding the pillow over his face. Dima has fucked him at least six times since they reached the room. Thanks to that he currently has a clear enough head to be mortified - for now at least. That doesn't mean the ache has gone away. He's still wet, still empty, could slide into Dima's lap and-

“Merciful Christ, but you’re young. I remember being seventeen. Has it gotten any easier than when I did it?”

“No,” Zhenya groans.

Dima chuckles. “I didn’t think so. If it helps, thirty-four isn’t that easy either.”

“No,” he repeats. That does not help. That makes it worse actually. “I thought things got better when you got older, that you would know what you’re doing.”

That makes Dima laugh again. He’s laughed a lot so far, between spewing rumbling filth as he turned Zhenya inside out with his tongue and his cock and god help him, once with his whole damn hand and gasping breaks when they’re both too spent to speak at all. The lines around his eyes are probably from smiling and laughter. The sound wraps around Zhenya like the blankets and he can almost forget what’s outside waiting for him. “Oh god I wish.”

He peeks at Dima, lifting the pillow, just a little. “You do?”

“Mmhm.” Dima hums, dragging his fingertips leisurely across the skin of his pectorals. 

Zhenya pulls the pillow back down tight against his face to hide the hitch in his breathing. His skin is starting to warm up but he doesn’t want to stop talking yet. So he needs to take calming breaths and not look at Dima. That will probably work. Maybe. 

“I don’t think anyone knows what they’re doing really. It’s all just one huge fucking lie people perpetuate so that other people younger than them will listen to them. We just don’t realize it until you’re the one telling the lie. It’s a vicious cycle. You thought I knew what I was doing earlier and it got you into my room didn’t it?”

Zhenya thinks about that and can’t argue the point. Though he thinks Dima may be underestimating his own knowledge considering, well, the state of the bed for one and the state of their bodies for another. “Thanks for the tip. I’ll file it away for later. I’m sure it’ll be helpful.”

Dima tweaks his left nipple. Zhenya bites the pillowcase but he does not moan. He does not. He is going to have a civil conversation with this man before he turns back into a whimpering, begging bitch wanting nothing more than to be bred. He’s excellent at setting and reaching goals.

“I’m all sorts of helpful today. So tell me, what’s with all the paperwork? You went into heat, you needed help, I offered, and you accepted. We’re enjoying it together. We’re both legally consenting adults, so why the drama?” 

Silence stretches between them. Zhenya would like it if not for the fact that it was filled with his awkward, awful shame. The career-destroying brand of humiliation goes a long way to kill all his desire save the basest of his biological needs resetting themselves so, hey, there’s that, right? One step closer to completing his goal. 

“Zhenya, if you don’t tell me I’ll have to guess.” 

Then Dima waits. Zhenya can actually feel those blue eyes boring into him and breathes into his pillow trying to stay calm. He does his best to resolutely ignore the way the warmth in his skin has shifted to a tingling sensation that means sometime in the next thirty or so minutes he’s going to need to be fucked again but the feeling of being stared at coupled with the smell of sex and alpha in the sheets are not helping any. Neither is Dima when he taps Zhenya’s stomach with the rolled up papers. 

“Come on, tell me. Are you the bastard son of Putin? A superstar in some TV show I haven’t seen? You don’t have any tattoos so you’re not a mob prince. Oh, I’ve got it. You’re a Soviet sleeper agent and as soon as you’re activated you’re going to single handedly revive the glorious communist state so long as I don’t get you distracted by breeding you full of some of those prized omega-born multiples. That’s it, isn’t it?”

Zhenya hits Dima with the pillow he’d been using to cover his face. Dima laughs, a sharp bright noise that is too big for the small hotel room. He flings it back at Zhenya though his aim is towards the foot of the bed. Zhenya has no shield now and has to meet his eyes. Dima is younger than he seemed outside, despite the premature grey in his hair. Close like this, he looks the thirty-something he is rather than the forty-something Zhenya had believed him to be. He likes him so much better this way, grinning but his eyes darting to the foot of the bed again and again in case Zhenya goes for his soft weapon again.

He could start some roughhouse playing here which would undoubtedly lead to more sex. If recent experience was anything to go on, their fucking would undo his anxiety for blessed minutes or maybe hours. That would be easy and watching Dima lean back casually to rest a hand on his own pillow tells him that his partner would let him. For some reason, that makes Zhenya want to tell him instead.

“I’m in the KHL. This is my first year playing for Magnitogorsk.” He swallows hard. These particular pro-sports rules are well known. There’s no way Dima doesn’t know. Zhenya’s throat feels full of roofing tacks. “They’re my coaches.”

Dima’s face falls fast. He moves fast too, straddling Zhenya’s hips and leaning. “Oh, Zhenya, I’m sorry.” His eyes are so pale, like the blue lines underneath the ice, Zhenya thinks. There is genuine regret in them. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not your fault.”

“It’s not yours either.”

Zhenya chokes out a laugh. “It is actually. I shouldn’t have thought I could hide my-“

Dima kisses him, hard. He uses teeth and Zhenya thinks he maybe splits his own lip on Zhenya’s teeth because suddenly he can taste blood. 

When Dima pulls back he says “I’m an SKA fan.”

He is so beautiful in that moment that Zhenya’s heart actually hurts. He swallows back a sob and snaps, “Fuck St. Petersburg. Your arena sucks,” before grabbing the back of Dima’s neck and pulling him back down. When they break for air he adds “And Sokolov is a shit goalie.”

“Shut up, he’s a great goalie,” Dima hisses because Zhenya is pulling his hair. He’s tugging the short strands to arch Dima's long neck back so there’s room to suck a hickie into the skin under his jaw. He doesn’t think Dima’s sweat tasted this good before did it? It can’t have. The salt makes his tongue feel rough and desperate. 

Zhenya’s on fire, desire making his body race to catch up with his mouth, wet and ravenous. Zhenya spreads thighs and plants his feet on the bed so he can buck up. With Dima straddling him like this there’s no way for him to get inside. That’s wrong. It’s so wrong. He’s an omega and he’s fucking creaming himself for this alpha yet he’s empty. Nature dictates that be rectified.

“Fuck me,” Zhenya pants, lifting his knees and pressing them into Dima’s flank. “Mitya, I need you inside me.”

“Anything. Anything, Zhenya,” Dima breathes a promise into his mouth repositioning himself to lie between his knees. He pushes in on one long, smooth thrust that forces all the air out of Zhenya’s lungs. 

He winds his arms around Dima’s neck and  locks his ankles around his lower back. He uses both points of contact to pull himself up to kiss Dima again. He thrusts his tongue sloppy and fast into Dima’s mouth in awkward counterpoint to the pulse of the cock inside him. His own cock is sandwiched tight between their stomachs, the friction of their writhing bodies driving him a whole different kind of crazy. He could come just from that but he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to come until he has Dima’s knot inside him and is sure that for at least a little while he’s anchored to one fixed point in the world.

He’s never been on the ocean before but he imagines it would feel like this - inexorable, powerful, rhythmic and seemingly unending. This time feels different. The last few times they fucked were incendiary but what Zhenya felt most beyond the gnawing need was playfulness. Right now he’s flooded with almost as much emotion as sensation: sadness, helplessness, affection, safety, solace, hope. Dima’s blue eyes are steady on his, sucking him down like whirlpools. 

Sex isn’t supposed to be like this, Zhenya thinks. It’s not supposed to feel so…much. Not with a stranger. Not even during heat. “Metiya,” Zhenya gasps,his heels digging in with hard earned strength hockey has given him that makes Dima wince. “Fucking knot me.”

“Anything.” Dima dips his head, rubbing his lips against Zhenya’s cheek. Sweat rolls down his nose onto Zhenya’s face as he slams in harder. “Anything you want.”

Only he is pulling out, leaving Zhenya gaping wide and dripping onto the sheets without Dima’s cock to keep his wetness inside.  “Come back,” he pants, clutching at Dima’s flanks. “Metiya, I need it.” He feels open and exposed but he forces out the next words anyway. He could be honest here, in this place at this time, in a way he has never been able to in his entire life before. “Need you.”

“Then you can have it. Anything, Zhenya” Dima repeats, strangled. “Just roll over for me. It’ll be easier after.” He sounds ready to cry, like he’s the one who is being torn apart by his biology. Zhenya obeys, sinking into the feeling of Dima’s hands and words moving him. Then he’s filled again, fast and fluid with one push that makes Zhenya scream in contrast to Dima’s gasping sob that sound’s near tears. When Dima’s knot catches on Zhenya’s rim then locks, they writhe together, hips grinding together in circular motions as they’re too tightly tied to thrust.

Zhenya comes about five seconds after Dima does when he realizes that the liquid heat in his guts is Dima breeding him because condom. They forgot a condom. He should be angry, scared, upset. Instead his orgasm hits so hard that he is struck deaf and blind for so long that Dima is repeating his name with genuine concerned when the world sharpens back into focus.

“I’m okay, good. I’m so good. I’m- Fuck, Dima. We didn’t use anything.”

“Yeah. I’m clean but I’ll just have to send your jailers out for Plan B.” He sighs and nuzzles the back of Zhenya’s neck. “You smell so fucking good like this though. Like mine. I’m almost not sorry.”

“Almost?”

“I shouldn’t put you at risk. Alphas are supposed to be the reasonable ones during an omega heat.” He tucks his head under Zhenya’s chin. “You’re young enough to have inexperience as an excuse. I just wanted you more than I wanted to stop and be careful.”

“It’s okay. I think maybe I wanted it too.”

“Maybe.” Dima kissed his shoulder blade.  “Like I said, you’re so young.”

The NDA is lying on the bed right in front of him, thicker than he expected. It’s like one of the Russian editions of Vanity Fair magazine his mother liked, seemingly a hundred pages long. Not young enough, he thinks, picking it up with one hand and tugging it closer. 

“Zhenya? What’re you doing?”

“Reading what they want you to sign.” He glanced down and saw a line on the first page for his signature. “And me too apparently.”

Dima drapes his arm over Zhenya’s chest, wedging it beneath the arm holding up the papers. “That’s terrible afterglow reading.”

“Mhm,” Zhenya agrees but this is the best way he can imagine to face his greatest fear made reality. He’s still coasting on orgasm-afterglow and the completely separate sensation of his heat frenzy being soothed by each electric shot of Dima’s come inside him, filling him up. His instincts were screaming that this was where he should be - locked with a powerful alpha who could protect him and give him those strong children post-war omegas like his grandfather were always talking about.

The combination of feelings made him feel drugged. His body was rewarding him for obeying biological requirements with a flood of chemicals that were like candy for his brain. He’d been on some pretty heavy painkillers a couple times before - when he’d gotten injuries before finishing school. They were a lot like he felt now only he more clear-headed than those drugs did and none of them hit the pure animal part of his brain the way being knotted had every single time. 

So, yes. Now is the best time. This may be the only time he can bear to get through the whole thing in one go without degenerating into the little kid he still feels like sometimes.

The expectations for Dima are fairly standard. Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything. Failure to do so will result in the KHL raining down hell and brimstone upon him. No, it’s the following pages full of Zhenya’s regulations that are staggering.

“Are they serious?” Dima asks looking over his shoulder. They’re less than a fourth of the way through. “It’s unrealistic that they expect you to have all three of your mandatory heats in the off season. Thats like, what, three months? You’d have to time them like a Swiss watch!”

His incredulity is understandable. Even omegas intentionally coming off suppressants to get pregnant aren't able to fit into exact timelines like that. Yes, most omega heats and (almost as embarrassing for Zhenya when he was living at home) menstrual flushes that followed in the twenty-four hours afterwards fell into a monthly cycle like beta and some alpha women but not always. Some omegas naturally cycled less often or more, depending on the roll of the genetic dice. The omega body isn’t built for scheduling - it’s built for survival.

Heats are about saving energy in the first place which is why conception for omegas is only possible for the few days of their heat and failure to do so means their bodies eject any unnecessary biological material as soon as possible. Of course, a heat without some sort of protection almost always results in pregnancy for the same reason - survival. 

Everything Zhenya’s ever read on endless away-game roadtrips theorizes that the evolutionary mutation took after a near extinction event about a million and a half years ago. Denis bought the books for him, calling him paranoid because he wouldn't buy his own while doing it just the same, that said that they found the shift in the fossil evidence between remains that were two million years old versus one million. 

Before, everyone were betas according to the books but alphas and omegas emerged to keep the species alive. The heightened fertility coupled with lower time window was to save precious nutrients at a time when the entire species was starving to death. Knotting and the forced intimacy it caused countered the drive for alpha parents to abandon their omega mates and children in a time where “every man for himself” would otherwise have been the best option for an alpha but most likely lead to children produced dying off. That always comforted Zhenya, especially when he was going through his first year or two of heats, to know that nature had a reason for him being this way. The KHL’s rules may not make any sense but the science involved in his body’s behavior did. He clung to that fact when things got hard, like now, looking at demands being made of his body that were unreasonable and against the natural evolution he set as his anchor.

“More like ten weeks if we make play-offs and Metallurg always does.” He rubs his forehead. “It says the team doctor is covered by confidentiality on this and write me a prescription for heat inducers if it doesn’t just happen.”

Dima growls. It’s not an audible sound at first but a vibration that he feels from within the chest against his back that emerges in a rumbled, “You’re strong and healthy, Zhenya. You don’t need heat inducers.”

“If I don’t-“

“They’re dangerous enough for couples who are having trouble. It could damage your hormonal glands or organs or who knows what. You might not be able to have children after doing that.”

Zhenya doesn’t acknowledge that. He can’t think that far into the future - children, a family, a life outside of hockey. There’s only the game and there’s only now. There’s only living with the option given to him.

“People still die from oversuppressing all the time,” he says even though Dima should know better. Everyone knew that.

Oversuppression death wasn’t common in the Western world any more. There were even rumors every six or eight months about experimental drugs coming out of places like Switzerland or Japan about less dangerous, longer-lasting suppressants. Word was never concrete and so far nothing stuck.

In the some of the more conservative places where suppressants were under strict control or flat out banned, there were always stories about omegas who died on their illegal suppressants. Hiding what they were in exchange for the right to do things like drive a car, go to school, or walk alone outside at night without an alpha (or a beta male if the family lacked alphas) to chaperone them were worth the risk of death.

That was the reason no one talked about omegas when the great Soviet state rose up with its great claims of equality for all, men and women alike. Alpha and beta men and women, but not omegas. They couldn’t work the way alphas and betas could and when reliable suppressants were invented in the late fifties, the government decided omegas couldn’t be trusted to suppress without falling to one of the dire consequences. That was the real reason omegas were kept off the frontlines and out of the workforce - not because of any bullshit claims of “innate physical weakness”, "heat vulnerability", or “scent distraction" in other workers. 

“That doesn’t mean you will. That doesn’t mean you have to do what they say.”

“It says I have to confirm my status with the team doctors.”

“Lie.”

“Dima, you don’t understand.”

The arm around his chest tightened, pulling him close. “I don’t. I don’t understand at all why anyone would do this to themselves. Explain it to me.”

Zhenya opens his mouth, closes it until he finds the right words then opens it to say “Hockey is my life.” He sags, going limp in Dima’s embrace. “Literally, my life. That makes it worth all of it.”

He can’t see Dima like this but he can feel it when Dima’s lips touch the top notch on his spine. “It’s your true love, eh?”

“Yes,” Zhenya whispers, eyes clenched shut against the truth of it. He wishes he could love something, anything, more than hockey so he could get out. Every so often he’ll convince himself he can then his skates hit the ice and he knows he never will. “It’s worth anything.”

“Jesus Christ, Zhenya.” Dima sighs. “Lean back. You’re making yourself all tight and I just loosened you up.”

"I'm fine."

"Lying again."

"Just let it go."

"Fine. Fine I'll just- It's wrong though. It's like the East German Omega Womens swim team though, Zhenya, from back in '78. Do you know what they did to them? The drugs? The torture? The hormones? The way-"

"Stop," he grits out. "Just stop."

Zhenya stares down at the contract in his hands. Isolation during off-season, coordinated long-distance training, gag order. It's been his worst fear since he was eleven and its lying beside him now like some breathing, waiting monster. 

"It is what it is. I made the NHL draft. One year and then I'm out. I can play in America and never worry about any of this ever again."

That has Dima smiling against his hair, hugging him. "Good. That's good. You should get to be happy as who you are, no matter what you're doing. It's about time we get over our ridiculous omega prejudices in this country and catch up with the rest of the world."

Zhenya snorts. "Figures I'd pick up one of the few alpha male omegaists in existence at a fucking hotel bar."

"I guess you just lucked out."

Zhenya leans into Dima and nods. "Yeah. I think I did."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Subtle Knot Which Makes Us Man](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3323405) by [RsCreighton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RsCreighton/pseuds/RsCreighton)




End file.
